Earlier this year, my wife and I bought a 21-speed Raleigh Companion tandem mountain bike — a bicycle built for two. We found out riding a tandem bike is fun, but in some ways it’s more challenging to ride than a traditional bike.
Things like pushing off, getting up on the seats, and establishing balance aren’t so easy, when you’re trying to do it in unison with another person. And, let’s not forget about stopping the bicycle with both riders remaining perpendicular to the pavement.
In tandem bicycling, there’s a captain and a stoker. The captain steers, applies brakes, and changes gears. The stoker, as you might guess, puts a lot into the pedaling. The stoker also helps keep an eye on traffic, warns the captain of potential hazards, recommends gear changes, and takes the pictures.
Even though riders are synchronized, they each have their jobs. A big one for the captain is steering. Where the captain navigates, the stoker follows.
That’s kind of how it can be when writing for the web.
Accessibility can be like the captain, the driver. And search engine optimization (SEO) can be like the stoker, following the captain’s lead.
A search engine’s top goal is to rank the most relevant, easy-to-navigate, and well-organized pages. Search engines know when you write for accessibility, you’re not only working toward the best reach through inclusivity, you’re often improving the overall web experience for everyone.
So, it’s smart to know how to write for accessibility. It will help your SEO ranking. But more than that, it will make your site more appealing for all your visitors.
And to help, I have a few tips you can use on your next project.
5 ways to write for accessibility that will improve your SEO
#1: Write clear, understandable meta title tags.
The meta title tag — often just referred to as the title tag — is an HTML element. It’s a descriptive title displayed on the browser tab. It also shows up on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as the main heading for a result — it’s the link you click to get to a page.
Readers should know what’s on your page by reading the title tag.
When you write a clear title, even individuals with a cognitive disability will know what to expect from your page. And, when they see it at the top of their browser, they’ll know they clicked the correct link.
For blind and sight-limited people using screen-reading technology, the title tag is at the top of the page. This can confirm the page they’re on is correct.
Here’s an example of a title tag for tandem bicycles which needs improving:
Awesome Two-Seater Bikes… Best Deal in Town
First, individuals with cognitive disabilities may not associate “two-seater bikes” with tandem bikes. After all, you can buy bikes with children’s seats. That is two seats, but is it a tandem bike? And, what town are we talking about anyway?
This improved title is better for accessibility:
Highest Quality Tandem Bicycles in Denver… Starting at Just $650
There’s no doubt the improved title is better for everyone. We know what we’ll find on the page just from the title.
Descriptive title tags increase your SEO ranking, as well. When your target keyword — “tandem bicycle” in this case — is in your title, your page ranks higher.
But, there’s even another SEO bonus.
When external websites and social media platforms link to your page, the title tag is automatically chosen as the clickable anchor text link. Since you don’t know what text will introduce or lead up to your link, you want a descriptive text link displayed for readers. It makes it easier for them to decide if they want to click through.
Links pointing to your page from other sites boost your SEO score. If the title is clear, people understand what the page is about and click on it.
And, here’s a Google gotcha. If you don’t have a title tag relative to your page’s content, Google can look at your content and create its own title.
You may, or may not, like what they come up with.
#2: Use descriptive header levels.
Similar to your title tag, subheadings throughout the body of your page should also be written with descriptive text.
You won’t want to include your keyword in more than one or two headings to avoid the appearance of keyword stuffing. But, you do want your subheadings to be relevant and understood by everyone.
Headings written with a specific message help web users with cognitive disabilities to identify the beginning and end of each section on the page. Plus, clear, descriptive subheads help blind and visually impaired individuals skim your content for pertinent information using a screen reader.
But, that’s not all. You also want to make sure you’re using appropriate levels for your headings.
For example, you should have a single level-one heading on your page. The level-one heading is reserved for the main header on your page. The headline, in other words.
The next heading on your page should be a level-two heading, sometimes called an H2 tag. If it has subpoints relative to it, nest them as level-three headings. Any subpoints nested under a level-three heading would be tagged as a level-four heading… and so on.
Use them like you’d use nested bulleted lists. Each level has a hierarchy. This makes your page easier to understand for everyone. Your visitors can quickly see your main points and the supporting information related to each one.
When you do this, you also provide screen-reader users a way to identify their location on the page and provide more efficient navigation.
But, what is the SEO benefit?
Search engines use header content to determine what the page is about. They also assess if your heading is relative to the page content and use it in your score. Using well-organized, descriptive headers is a significant factor in how your page will rank in search results.
#3: Use descriptive alt tags for your images.
An alt tag is an HTML element assigned to an image displayed on the screen. Unlike captions, which accompany images and are seen by everyone, alt tag descriptions are not seen visually on the screen.
The descriptive text you write is embedded in the HTML and recognized by screen-reading technology.
Alt tags offer specific visual information. For instance, the image of a tandem bike at the beginning of this article has this an alt tag:
“Picture of a man wearing a baseball cap, short pants, and a T-shirt. He’s standing behind a dark-gray Raleigh Companion tandem bicycle in front of a red Subaru Outback. A chocolate-brown Standard Poodle is looking in from the side.”
That description is informative to a screen-reader user. But, it’s redundant to a person without a visual disability who can see the picture.
Search engines love it when the copy has descriptive alt tags for images. Their goal is to make their return the most helpful results to all their searchers, and they reward you when you help them accomplish it.
#4: Create longer, descriptive text links.
You may not always be creating the actual text link in your copy, but you should mark what text you want displayed in the link.
When you do, make your text more than just one or two words. Longer text links provide mobility-challenged individuals a bigger target on a touch screen. Extended text links even help people with large hands activate links, when they’re using small digital devices.
You can ensure text links have enough length by making them more descriptive. Visually impaired individuals and people with cognitive disabilities rely on descriptive text links for improved interaction with your page. If you have a line such as:
Click here to download your copy of Fast Track to Killer Copy
It’s not helpful to make the clickable text, “Click here.”
Make the whole statement the link. Individuals with cognitive disabilities will associate the download with the active link. The text link will now be large enough for mobility-challenged folks to activate. And, blind and visually impaired individuals using screen readers will see the link as a complete statement when using tools to display a list of links on a page.
What’s the SEO benefit?
Search engines are savvy at understanding the text within a link. They use it to help determine what a page is about. They also determine whether the text link is relative to the page content.
A text link displayed as “Click here” has no relative value to any page on the web.
But, a text link on a bicycle shop’s website with, “Click here to save $100 on a Raleigh Companion tandem bicycle,” is both descriptive and relative.
Keeping your text links descriptive helps nudge your page closer to the #1 position in search results.
#5: Make video transcriptions available.
This one is easy. Transcription services provide written text extracted from a video. You don’t even have to write anything, but you can offer to clean up the transcript and make it more readable.
As an SEO web writer, you’ll gain favor with clients when you point out the value of making video content more accessible, and you’ll help improve their SEO, too.
Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals benefit a great deal from video transcriptions. It’s crucial for their inclusivity on the web.
But, providing captions and transcripts also helps your entire audience. Have you ever been in a noisy environment like an airport, bus, train, or live conference and were unable to hear what was said in a video? Or, maybe you’ve been on a bus, train, or in the car with the family… and you forgot your earbuds, but didn’t want to disturb others by playing a video?
That is a temporary accessibility issue.
Video transcriptions provide a valuable way of consuming the spoken content when listening to the audio is not an option.
Adding transcriptions also has an SEO payoff. Search engines are intelligent, but they can’t index audio spoken inside a video. When your client adds video transcriptions, the title, byline, and all the content is indexed by Google. So, it becomes searchable by you, web visitors, and of course, search engines looking to rank your page.
By now, you can see why it’s smart to write for accessibility and how it can improve your SEO.
Use these tips on your next client project, and be sure to let them know the benefits. They’ll appreciate your insight. You’ll increase your value as their writer.
